Little Tim, Big Tim (8 page)

Peter joins me when the pain level rises sufficiently enough to warrant his existence. The push-ups in the rain, the running up and down the hills, the water jerry carries; I am a toy in their personal boot camp.

The children—for that is what they are, just seventeen year-olds—who are giving me orders admire the strength, stamina and pain tolerance of the fourteen year-old. The bastardisation treatment lasts five days.

They give up on the physical stuff and use ideas of torment that I’m sure they’ve seen on TV. When the sun comes up I am made to cook the senior boys’ breakfast, clean their boots and then move to the camp kitchen to do the pans. I perform all these tasks with a smile.

By day six they give up on tormenting me and some take the opportunity to get to know me personally. Captain Waters is furious that they haven’t broken me. It’s obvious that the senior boys, the highest ranks in the cadets, are being berated for failing to break me.

I spend the last two days of the camp sleeping in a hutchie (shelter) by myself. I’m not included in any of the organised activities. The senior boys sit with me when the activities have been concluded. They call Captain Waters a ‘wanker’ and say that I needn’t worry about them tormenting or torturing me anymore.

The camp finally finishes and I leave, knowing that they can’t break me and that I am never going to quit. I choose to stay in the cadets, making it difficult for Captain Waters to win. Inadvertently, my presence does not allow Captain Waters to prey upon other boys.

School starts again. I study every waking minute, but because I’m doing it by myself I’m not sure that what I learn is correct.

In my first term of fourth form (year ten) I’m in a class where the teacher is homosexual for sure, as his interest in looking at the boys’ bums as they come into class is repulsive. I begin his class by holding my pens and ruler and banging them on my desk until it annoys him, a daily ritual. When chastised for my behaviour I demand a transfer. I do this with all teachers that have homosexual tendencies.

Finally I am only in classes that have female teachers. I am well behind in my grades as ‘F’s’ and ‘D’s’ are predominately handed back to me. I find myself in the lowest classes.

The school swimming carnival is on and I have to swim in the fifty-metre race. I don’t know how to swim. It’s time for my race and no one realises that I can’t swim. I have to find a distraction to get out of this predicament.

Mr Waters is my target. I am walking half way up the pool length when I see Mr Waters perving at little boys’ arses. It sickens me that I can be aware of his perversion and the other teachers are completely ignorant.

I approach him and proclaim loudly and clearly,

‘Stop perving on those boys.
’

Embarrassed to be busted for his sick observation, he tells me to go and sit on the hill and that I am not to participate in any activities. I protest slightly but turn and smile as I have achieved my objective and get the bonus of exposing him again.

School exams are around the corner and I am freaking. I know I will fail. No matter how hard I try to learn, there are basic fundamentals that I keep getting wrong. I’m sitting in the remedial class trying to grasp what the teacher is patiently trying to explain to me when I am suddenly ejected from the
Light
into the
Dark.

As Little Big Tim I am plopped into a seat to find I am being given instruction by Mrs Roberts. I know Mrs Roberts because she lives in our street, but what confuses me is that she has always been the remedial teacher for the slow learners.

Flung into this reality confused, I am shocked to hear myself proclaim,

‘Fuck, what am I doing here
?
’

‘You can go to the principal’s office for that outburst. Tell him I sent you and what you just said,
’ Mrs Roberts retorts.

I walk out of the room with the full intention of going to get punished at the principal’s office, but shame overtakes my desire to adhere to Mrs Roberts’ directive.

As Shane I am in control but I’m totally lost as to the direction of the principal’s office. I go outside the building and sit on a bench enjoying the sun. A man who we don’t know soon approaches us.

‘What are you doing out here, Tim?
’ The stranger asks.

‘Umm, don
’
t
know, Mister.
’

‘Mister what, Tim?
’

‘I don’t know, Mister, Sir,
’adding the ‘Sir’ in case that is what he wants to hear.

‘Come with me. Your cheek has got you into a lot of trouble this time,
’ he threatens.

I follow him, relieved that someone knows how to negotiate these hallways to a known place. As we arrive in his office he picks a length of cane out of a bin that stores about forty canes. It’s an intimidating sight.

‘Hold out your hand,
’ he demands.

The swish of the cane comes down hard; I am ripped into the
Dark
to see Peter coming to the surface.

Being unprepared, the first swishes sting like hell. The next two on one hand and three on the other hand are taken without flinching. It infuriates our principal to the point that he decides to put extra effort into the last two swishes.

‘Get back to your class. And next time you are told to come to my office, do it promptly.
’

‘Yes, Sir,’
I know it will be prudent to address him this way.

I leave his office, to be totally confused as to where I am. I keep walking away from his office to ensure I look like I know what I am doing, but I don’t. And it’s confusing as to why I am still in this reality.

I know I was on the Cadet Camp (sharing the
Light
with Mark) but I have no idea how much time has passed. Where am I going? What am I meant to be doing? If I don’t solve this puzzle soon I will be back in the same office, with the same result.

I round a comer to be deposited into the
Dark
as Little Big Tim slips into the
Light.

I am at the far end of the building and the only way back to my class is back past the principal’s office. However, I know he sits outside his office near the end of the period to catch kids cutting class early—effective at one time, but now a deterrent as it has become habit that all students are aware of.

The class-period will finish in ten minutes. I decide to wait where I am until the bell rings so I can mingle with the flowing current of children moving purposefully to their next class. My next class is mathematics. I reach into my bag and see that my class diary is written almost ineligibly; I know I haven’t put these details in this diary.

It’s October of fourth form (year ten). I have mostly been absent since the attack in the Army Cadet Q store by Captain Waters. I wonder if that goddamn prick is still breathing. I am shocked I can call him such a derogatory term in my head. Blasphemy would be an accusation that my Mum and the Old

Man would use to shame me, but I don’t even feel a twinge of guilt. I have a new understanding in my head. My world seems to be refreshing itself.

I get to my maths class and realise that this is also the lowest class in the form system. The work in my book is not my writing and is almost, apart from some scribbles and some way-off calculations, non-existent. I need to do some serious catching up. It’s only four weeks to exams. No time to worry about my sudden entry into the real world. Time to study.

The class begins and it’s work I knew from the higher classes last year; the advantage pays off for me. I complete the work quickly and hand it in for a grade. My teacher calls me to her desk.
‘That’s an ‘A’. You have finally woken up, I’m pleased to see.’

‘Yes, Miss. I’m here to learn,’
I vow.

‘We’ll see. I wonder if it was a fluke.’

‘Try me,
T look at her confidently.

She gives me a new test and I quickly complete it and am about to return it to her when something within tells me to not be too cocky. A couple of correct answers crossed out will get the same overall result, although a lesser mark. I hand my work in and am once again called to her desk.

‘Eighteen out of twenty right and you had the two wrong answers correct, before you crossed them out. I’m sure you have been asleep all year. Keep it up,’
she encourages.

She doesn’t realise how close to the truth she is. School finishes and I go home to lock myself in my room to study. Study is all I seem to do when I am in the
Light.
I take my meals to my little room on the verandah and continue to study.

Mum has changed the way she treats me; in fact, I think that at times she may even be wary of me. I am four feet ten inches and lighter than nine stone, truly nothing to be scared of but the Old Man won’t even look at me. A lot has happened since I’ve been gone; the tables have definitely turned.

I have to maintain this new shift of power by not letting them become aware of the fact that I am not the one that has put them onto the back foot.

My study is my whole life. The next four weeks it’s ‘head down, arse up’. I steal my big sister’s textbooks to try and regain the level of education I had. At the end of the first four weeks that I am back in reality, I think I am ready.

I sit the exams and freak at the maths paper. I really don’t understand half of it. Sure, the remedial maths class wouldn’t have covered most of the maths I am looking at on the paper, but my sister’s textbooks that I learnt from must be outdated as well. The result is not going to be good.

The English exam is also complicated. Of the four book choices given, I have only read one. I devoured every book I thought could be used in the exam. I have knowledge of only one book but my essays and short questions are to be based on a choice of two books.

The first two parts of the two-hour English exam are short answer questions pertaining to the content of the two books chosen. I choose the
Catcher in the Rye,
which I haven’t read, and
The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll,
which I have. With the first part completed in thirty minutes, I move onto the second part, which is to write an essay on each of the two books. I begin furiously. This essay will have to be a cracker.

I pour every ounce of creativity and life into the essay on
The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.
The pile of scrunched up paper on my desk and at my feet is a testimony to how committed I am to getting this right. With two minutes to go I finish what I think is the best essay of my life.

Now I have to do the last part of the exam, an essay on
The Catcher in the Rye.
I write on the paper: ‘Did the catcher ever catch who, or what was in the rye?’ A joke that I hoped would be read last; a dismal effort due to lack of knowledge. I had done my best with what I had.

The last week of school for fourth form has arrived, and in the last period we are given our results in a sealed envelope. The envelopes are addressed to our parents as most of us are still under sixteen and the school thinks we are not responsible enough. I rip mine open to look at the result.

I start a chain reaction; all the other students rip their own envelope to read their results. I look at the certificate in front of me. The scale was 1—5, I being the highest. I received a 3 for English and a 4 for mathematics. That result meant that the work I did know and had attempted in the final exam would have been marked in the ninety’s out of a hundred.

I had done my best, although a below average result, I am content. My teacher is wrapped; one of her students has risen above the dreaded double 5 result. She looks at me and says,

‘I knew you would get a good result. In all my years of teaching I have never seen such commitment over the last four weeks than you’ve displayed. Make sure you go on to your senior years.’

‘Sure, Miss,
T yell at her as I run out the door to enjoy the beginning of my holidays.

Day two of the school holidays and the Old Man tells me to be ready after tea; he wants me to do something for him. I am wary that he is pushing me into a set-up.

We drive the short distance to Echo Point. The tourist site only has a waist high fence and, as we are looking at the Three Sisters, he moves behind me and presses my small body against it. He then grabs my pants and lifts me off the ground. While horizontal to the ground, I listen to the threats he makes to me.

‘You will do what I tell you and you will do it with whomever I tell you to. We all have to do our bit for the family and if you don’t, I will throw you off this cliff.
’

I don’t answer him as the fear has gripped my jaw shut. I don’t care anymore; ‘
finish it
’, I silently plead with him,
‘just finish it.
’

‘Another thing, if you’re feeling like sacrificing yourself I promise you if you don’t do as I tell you, I will kill your mother. Then who will look after Dorothy and James?
’

I don’t say a word; I wish he had thrown me before that final threat. I am completely trapped and petrified; I know the Old Man is sick enough to carry out these threats. Now I have the responsibility to do exactly what I am told, and obviously who I am told to do it with. The nightmare is back.

‘Yes, Dad!’

I am lowered back onto the ground under control of the Old Man. Every aspect of my life is under his control. We drive another short distance to the park near the Echo Point shops. I love this park; I love to ride my bike down to Echo Point, follow the bush tracks until I am exhausted and then come back to the park and lie on my back under the huge trees and recover from the exercise. I really love the feel and energy of this park. The Old Man is responsible for me feeling nauseated every time I am near that park after tonight though.

I hate him more for tainting my sanctuaries than the open prostitution he is putting me through. He doesn’t even hide the cash exchange so, unlike before, I can’t even pretend that the rape was an unfortunate and unavoidable incident. Peter the pain holder takes the suffering and I slip into the
Dark.

The place that I have been propelled into really stinks. It takes some time to realise that I am kneeling in effluent on the concrete floor of a darkened toilet. The stench singes my nose and repulses me more than the heat and pain I am feeling in my arse. My head is crushed against the cistern.

The one responsible for the pain in my arse lifts my hips until my legs are straight. The fluid from the floor flows down my legs, distracting me briefly from the pain.

The speed of the usual motion increases as does the pain, until the sick prick has his fulfilment and empties himself into me. As he extracts, Shane takes the feeling the violator’s juice running down our legs. The stench of the toilets overpowers us.

I am bundled into the back seat of the car and driven home. The Old Man goes inside first to check that he can get me to bed without bumping into any family members. Mum is working night shift and as soon as any family members hear the Old Man’s car they quickly get to bed to save any interaction with him.

He comes back to the car and says,

‘Get out and get to bed, don’t tell anyone or I will kill Mum, do you understand?’

‘Yes, Dad,
’a defeated response is all I, as Little Big Tim, can utter.

I put myself to bed, for this is the only way I can deal with the threats that the Old Man makes. The fear of the younger ones not having a Mum means that I will definitely tow the line. I feel nauseated, lying in bed not able to wash the scum off my body and feeling the ooze run out of my bottom, however, I know that if I spew on the floor I will draw unwanted attention, which I have been warned not to do. Feeling completely beaten again and disgusted by the state I am in, I cry myself to sleep.

I wake the next morning and quickly get up and into the shower. As the cleansing water runs down my back, the temperature alternates between hot and cold due to the washing machine in which I have put my sheets. The evidence is removed from yet another rape. I am the only one up. I get dressed and run all the way to Katoomba Falls.

My hiding spot is about ten metres down a steep incline. Once I’m in my favourite position I can see the amazing beauty of the Jameson Valley. The misty spray off the falls beckons me to mix my blood with its steam. James and Dorothy are the only reasons I don’t jump today.

Every second night for the next two weeks I suffer the same degrading, disgusting brutality as the night in Echo Point; the only difference is the location of the toilet.

I become aware that James isn’t home those evenings.

Our parents have severed any normal brother-to-brother bond; however, they are unable to destroy the desire we have to protect each other in fearful situations.

James and I have been playing soccer in the park during the so-called holidays. We need to go to the toilet so I go inside expecting my little brother to follow me—he doesn’t. I have finished what I need to do and as I am washing my hands, I hear a ruckus outside the door.